Beauty and the Beast

by Laurel Cain Haws

  Diana’s attention to detail was what had led to her discovery of Gabriel’s Staten Island mansion in the first place. When Gabriel had her abducted by his henchmen, blindfolded, and then taken there to show her Vincent’s sick baby, she had noticed the unique pattern of the tiles on the floor. She gave a drawing she had made of that pattern to Father to take to Joe, so he could find out where the mansion was located. It had turned out to be an imported Italian-style tile used in only a few very expensive homes in the New York area. It wasn’t difficult to narrow it down to the one on Staten Island after that.

  Diana began to walk through the mansion now, noticing every detail. She not only wanted to find any pertinent clues Joe needed to make sure Gabriel’s empire had been permanently taken down, but she also wanted to see if there were any clues that would help her to

  understand Gabriel’s obsession with Vincent and his child. She walked into every room on every floor of the huge house and found absolutely nothing.

  Then Diana went into the basement where the electrified cage that Gabriel had held Vincent in was located. It was there that she found what she was looking for. Under the stairway leading to the basement she found a door hidden in the shadows. When she opened it, she stepped into an huge beautiful wood-paneled office with wooden beams overhead. She studied the room for a minute and then smiled. Diana turned around, left the room, shut the door behind her, and then she went upstairs to the front door.

  “Ron, there isn’t anything here that will help Mr. Maxwell with his investigation. We might as well go,” Diana said to the officer.

  Ron looked happy to be leaving, “All right Ms.

  Bennett.” He escorted her out, and they got into the squad car.

  Steve asked, “Did you find anything?”

  Diana answered, “Nothing that will help Joe Maxwell with his investigation. I didn’t eat any breakfast this morning. Would you guys drop me off at the diner I passed a few blocks over when I was coming this morning? Ill catch a cab from there back home.”

  They dropped her off at the diner, and she went in and watched them drive away. As soon as they were out of sight, she left the diner and went around the corner into the alley. She found the manhole where Chuck Johnson had dropped her and Father off when they went underground to save Vincent and Little Jacob. Diana lifted the cover and climbed down, replacing the cover above her. She took a small flashlight out of her coat pocket and then climbed down to the tunnel to go back to the mansion. Diana went through the hidden basement tunnel entrance she had used to rescue Vincent, and then she headed for the office under the stairs. She walked into it and turned the light on. She was thankful that the city had left the electricity on to continue the investigation.

  The huge room was shaped very much like a ship, and the ceiling beams came to a point to her right. She noted that the lighting left the point of the beams in shadow. “A couple of people could hide in that corner on top of that platform on the beams,” she thought.

  What had drawn her attention earlier was the fact that the room was not symmetrical. It was apparent that the wall behind the large desk in front of her was closer to her than it should be, and she knew there had to be an hidden room behind it. She just needed to find the door and figure out how to open it. The walls of the office were lined with bookshelves full of books everywhere except behind the desk. The only thing on that wall was a picture of Alice with the white rabbit. She looked at the hundreds of books on the shelves and thought to herself, “I sure hope the trip-lever for the secret panel is not hidden in a book!”

  Diana went behind the desk, sat down in the plush leather chair, and studied everything on the desk. There was a pair of gold bookends with a single book between them along with a desk pad and a pen holder containing some pens and pencils. She started to open one of the drawers and then suddenly swung her attention back to the book between the gold bookends. It was Alice Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. She shook her head and smiled. The original title of Lewis Carroll’s book was Through the Looking Glass. Modern adaptations were entitled Alice in Wonderland. “Is that a remote clue?” She thought. She took the book out from between the bookends and opened it. Inside the false book she found an electronic remote control, and she laughed, “Remote clue, indeed!”

  Diana pointed the remote control at every spot on the wall behind the desk with no results. She grimaced, “I guess it was too much to hope for that the batteries wouldn’t be dead.” She opened the back of it and took out the two dead AAA batteries. She began hunting through the desk drawers for more batteries without success.

  Then she recalled that she had bought a package of four AAA batteries for her television remote and had put the package in her coat pocket and forgotten about them.

  “Oh, please be there!” She dug through her pocket and found the package. After putting the false book back between its bookends and replacing the batteries in the

  remote control, it occurred to her that if Lewis Carroll’s book held the remote control, perhaps the picture of Alice had the remote sensor. Still seated, she pointed the remote control at the picture, pushed the button, and the panel swung open toward her. She scooted the chair quickly toward the desk to avoid being struck by it.

  A light inside the room automatically turned on, and she was amazed by what she saw. Alice in Wonderland hadn’t really seemed like a clue an evil crime lord would use to hide a secret room. Now, she was sure it wasn’t. What appeared before her was an huge missing piece of the puzzle—or was it? She got up from the desk and stepped into the room. If she shut the panel, there was only room for herself. She looked around and quickly found the light switch and the button to open and shut the panel from inside the secret room. Then she left the light on in there and went to the light switch for the office and turned it off. She went back into the secret room and shut the panel, keeping the remote control in her coat pocket. Diana didn’t want anyone else finding it as she had done. When the panel closed, a quiet fan overhead began circulating fresh air into the room. “Someone thought of everything!” She thought.

  Diana now turned her attention to what she had discovered. This was the secret office of a very meticulous person. It was a treasure trove of scientific magazines, books on biology, genetics, and medicine, and personal journals. Everything was in order by subject and dates.

  This person was obviously a scientist and was uncomfortable with technology for recording findings. All of the journals were handwritten. She picked up one of the journals on the desk. Inside the cover were the date it had been started and the name, Dr. Dominik Vlas. She laid the book back down, sat in the cushioned desk chair, and began opening the desk drawers. She found an impressive collection of degrees in medicine and genetics from both the United States and Romania. There was also a large vase on the floor between the desk and the inner wall which contained several document rolls. When she unrolled one, she realized it was a set of blueprints for this mansion.

  “What on earth did this obviously good man have to do with Gabriel, and where is he? How does this tie in with Gabriel’s obsession with Vincent and his child?” She thought to herself. “Maybe this is completely unrelated.”

  She began opening and flipping through the journals on the desk, because they were apparently the last ones Dr. Vlas had either been reviewing or had made entries in. Her quick perusal didn’t uncover anything extraordinary in the first two she went through. Then in the third one, she came across an entry that nearly made her heart stop. The name, “Vincent,” leaped off the page at her. On the same page were the names, “Adrian,” which she didn’t recognize, and “Gabriel.” She flipped back to the front cover. This journal was started thirty-five years earlier. Diana made a very careful search of this one until she

  found the entries she needed to make sense of everything that had happened and was still happening. Then she began to read.

  Dr. Dominik Vlas’journal entries:

  My entire professional life has been devoted to
the study of the Tandins. They are my dearest and most beloved friends. Even though my findings cannot be revealed at this time to an ignorant destructive world, I am praying that enlightenment will one day dawn, and that my research will be met with appreciation for the good that could be done with it.

  My ancestors are from Romania, and my family has a long tradition of studying the sciences. I myself am a medical doctor, but because of my family’s relationship with the Tandins, I chose to do genetic research instead of practicing medicine. My family helped to smuggle many of the Tandins limng in the tunnels and caves under New York City, from Romania, on ships they booked passage on nearly two hundred years ago. Geologists and archaeologists in my family had discovered the tunnels and caves while exploring here, and they knew they would make a safer home for our Tandin friends still limng in

  Romania.

  In Romania these people were often mistaken for vampires or werewolves because of their appearance. This made them targets for an unenlightened public bent on their destruction. They did have some human friends, though, and my family was privileged to be among those. In Romania, these people were called “Leo Tandrul Ins,” the Romanian words for “Gentle Lion Man. ” They shortened this to “Tandins” when they came to America. In Romania the Tandins would have been hunted to extinction. Since the word “Tandin” has absolutely no meaning in Romanian, they effectively left behind the country that had been more than unkind to them, as well as their language.

  My research into their genetic makeup has revealed that the Tandins’ DNA is human with additional markers. They are simply an evolutionary leap forward with enhanced strength, speed, and endurance. They also have an advanced immune system and are rarely ill. These people are highly intelligent with superior mind control. The Tandins employ both telepathic and empathic powers which have developed to an advanced degree over the centuries. They even possess the ability to heal those within their community group with their combined mental strength.

  The Tandins are very cultured and gentle but fiercely protective of anyone within their circle of family and friends. When provoked, their vocal cords can emit a terrifying roar that is as fierce sounding as any wild lion. They have often

  found that roar to be enough to frighten enemies away without resorting to violence. Their senses are equally heightened. They possess powerful eyesight, especially in the dark, similar to felines, keen hearing, and a sense of smell equivalent to canines. Unlike wild cats or even normal humans, though, they require very little sleep. Their appearance, including extra body and facial hair on the men, enlarged canine teeth in both the upper and lower jaws of the men, and daintier elongated canine fangs only in the upper jaws of the women, along with majestic lionlike facial features and flowing manes of head hair, makes it impossible for the Tandins to blend in with regular humans.

  In order to keep these wonderful people safe from the world above, I had a secret entrance to the tunnels installed by the Tandins in this basement. That has been my doorway to their world. Somehow, though, their world has been breached by great evil, and I am the one responsible for the tragedy that has occurred. It breaks my heart to chronicle these events. Unfortunately, it is all I can do. I cannot bring my sons to justice for what they have done without bringing further danger into the Tandins’ world. All I can do to take responsibility for my part in this is to explain what has happened. Maybe someday someone else can help to make things right.

  On one of my trips to visit my family in Romania, I found Gabriel and Adrian living in deplorable conditions with a drunken and abusive father. Gabriel was 7 and

  Adrian was 17. I stopped this horrible man in the act of beating the boys right out in the streets. He accepted a large sum of money I paid him to turn the brothers over to me. I then brought them here with me to America, legally adopted them, and took care of and educated them. In spite of all of the love and attention I lavished on them, they both turned out completely evil. I guess they had just been too heavily influenced by their biological father before I found them.

  Somehow Adrian became aware of the research I was doing. I still don’t know how. He became obsessed with kidnapping the offspring of the Tandins and then controlling these advanced people for his own power-hungry purposes. I kept the location of the Tandins’ home a secret, so he had to watch and wait for his opportunity, and somehow he managed to find one. What is even more heartbreaking is that he dragged his little brother, Gabriel, along with him into this diabolical plot.

  On January 12th, when Gabriel was ten and Adrian was twenty, events occurred which shook the Tandins’ world to the core, and they devastated me. Adrian, even at his young age, had managed to use his generous allowance to build up a criminal empire. He took Gabriel and the thugs he hired and attempted to capture Loren, a normal human who married a Tandin named Gaylin, together with their baby Vincent, at Loren’s parents’ home in the city above.

  The Tandins here in America have a mixed community

  of Tandins and normal humans with whom they live symbiotically. It is quite common for them to intermarry. In this case, Gaylin and his younger brother, Tanimus, both Tandins, married human identical twin sisters, Loren and Letha. At the time this crime occurred, Tanimus and Letha didn’t have any children. Gaylin and Loren had fraternal twins, a baby boy named Vincent and a baby girl named Elisia. The babies were about five months old and very tiny but very smart. They had already begun to talk.

  Loren had taken Vincent into the home’s solarium to look at the flowers, and Gaylin had Vincent’s twin sister, Elisia, in another part of the house. Gaylin’s telepathic connection to Loren alerted him to the danger she was in when the men broke in and attempted to kidnap her with the baby. Gaylin gave Elisia to his sister-in-law, Letha, and then he ran through the house to save his wife and son. When Gaylin attacked the men, they were momentarily distracted, so Loren escaped from their grasp and ran out into the city with Vincent. Before the men shot and killed Gaylin, he contacted his brother, Tanimus, by telepathy and passed Loren’s thoughts to him, so he could look for Loren and Vincent. Tanimus was still in the tunnels on his way to the house.

  Tanimus was unable to save either Gaylin or Loren. When he got to his brother, Gaylin was already dead. By the time he found Loren, she had been strangled to death by Adrian, because she wouldn’t reveal where she had put Vincent. She had shown Tanimus by telepathy where she

  had left Vincent, and Tanimus assures me that he found someone telepathically to rescue the baby, but Vincent is lost to his family. Tanimus also told me that they don’t dare try to retrieve Vincent or it could endanger both the baby and the people who have him. Tanimus is sure that Vincent is safe with the people he is with. The Tandins have since closed down the home where the security breach occurred.

  Tanimus did say that he became very concerned about his nephew’s welfare when he felt him become sick and he wondered if he would have to risk going to him. Vincent’s telepathic link with his parents had been suddenly severed by their violent deaths and the baby became gravely ill as a result of that loss. However, Vincent soon made an empathic connection with his new family and recovered. Tanimus is aware of where he is and that he is safe, so he feels it is better for Vincent and his new family to not interfere, especially with Adrian continuing his maniacal search for Vincent.

  I can’t understand how an act of kindness could go so terribly wrong. My family had three identical heirloom opal rings, set in twenty-four carat gold, passed down for generations through my family. In fact, they are now five-hundred-fifty years old. They are each inscribed inside with the Latin words, “Verum mos paro vos solvo.” The English translation is “The truth will set you free.” They were appropriate for a family of scientists and scholars. I wear one, and I gave the other two to my adoptive sons,

  and they have made a mockery of them with their diabolical behavior.

  Four years after Vincent was lost and his parents killed, Gabriel followed in his brother’s misguided footsteps and
became a killer himself. I should have at least tried to interfere when I noticed his obsessive behavior toward my housekeeper’s daughter. However, she was sixteen and Gabriel was only fourteen. I thought that she would rebuff him, and it would pass. Once again, I was very naive in my thinking. I have no doubt that she seduced him, but afterwards he strangled her to death. His excuse was that she was so perfect, that he had to kill her to keep her perfect and to prove how much he loved her. Clearly he is insane. I have had him committed to Summer Meadows Psychiatric Hospital in Queens. I only hope that their treatment program might help him.

  Diana rechecked all of the journals on the desk, but it was clear this was the last entry Dr. Vlas ever made to the volumes in this room. Now the other journals she had perused made more sense. They had numerous references to a “Tandin” or the “Tandins,” but she had just thought that “Tandin” was a family surname, not a new species of people. “Vincent isn’t alone! He needs to know

  this. What happened to you, Dr. Vlas?” She thought.

  Diana was jolted out of her thoughts when she heard the floorboards overhead creaking and then the sound of footsteps on the stairs over the office door. She quickly turned out the light and sat in darkness until someone opened the door and turned on the light in the office.

  Then she realized that the picture of Alice with the white rabbit was more than just the remote sensor holder. It was just a picture to those in the office, but for her it was also a window through which she could see everything going on in the office outside the secret room.

  She watched the two men walk toward the desk and her, and she thought, “So, it’s one of Joe’s cockroaches!” The younger man was Steve Palmer, one of her escorts from that morning. He was the one who had asked her if she had found anything. The other man looked like an older version of Gabriel, with thin angular features and cold dead eyes. He was also wearing one of the opal rings. “This must be Adrian. He looks even more evil than Gabriel did, if that’s possible, and a lot more dangerous because he probably isn’t insane!” Diana thought.